3 ms·

What exactly are they grinding on? Like, what is the output of their effort?

by eof 6y ago

iamacyborg 6y ago
Money, presumably.
cube00 6y ago
More hours at work means more deals then the other guy who went home at 5pm.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> What exactly are they grinding on? Like, what is the output of their effort? There is a sharp divide between those who bring in revenue and everyone else. Analysts and associates do not bring revenue. Their work is to idle until a deal is imminent. At that moment, being the team that can immediately whip together materials for a client, that can immediately generate closing documents, that can be the difference between winning and losing the deal. Between tens or hundreds millions of dollars in fees for the firm or zero. Between those intense bursts it's mostly farting around. At the higher level, more work means more selling. Unless you're in a real bum corner of the market, there is always another deal you could pick up. If you start reaching diminishing returns, empire build--branch out. One of the biggest breaks I had in my career was moving from a finance culture to an engineering-led one. The finance culture works. But it optimises for short-term results and it optimises for the partners, those at the top.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Of course, Big Law works on a similar model. associates get billed out for far more than they make so it's in the interests of partners to generate lots of billable hours. And then it's basically up or out. Make partner (at which point, as you say, your job basically becomes sales to a non-trivial extent) or leave. Management consulting as well.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Big Law works on a similar model Law and consulting are different because more hours literally means more revenue. Banking is success fee driven. It's thus theoretically possible for hours to be reduced without impacting--or possibly, positively impacting--revenue.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Fair enough even if the end result is pretty much the same. My understanding is that investment banking, which I made a very deliberate decision not to go into, throws associates at a whole lot of deal book production and proofreading that is only read by some other overworked associate.
      - ryandrake 6y ago
        Yea that's one of the worst things that really convinced me that the investment banking track was not for me: How utterly pointless the work was. You're spending 100 hours a week updating slide decks to use 14 point font instead of 12 point, and making the titles a different shade of blue. And it will all be read by....likely nobody, maybe someone who doesn't care what the font is. I'd rather grind as a software developer on a feature that never ships--at least there's creative output, and you're learning something.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- belly_joe 6y ago
  I think the chief complaint of the analysts is less about the total hours worked than the fact that much of the grinding is not productive. From what I recall, the issue was that management knew analyst time was not valuable at all, and so it was common practice for them to leave the office at 7pm with an "i need this by tomorrow" order for client materials that were meant for speculative pitching rather than supporting a live deal. Thus the analyst ends up getting holidays and weekends crushed repeatedly by projects that aren't really that meaningful and could have been spread out in a much more manageable way if the higher ups had given any consideration at all to what they were asking.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > the chief complaint of the analysts is less about the total hours worked than the fact that much of the grinding is not productive It's a fair complaint. This anecdote stood out: "VPs create shells for decks that do not align with what senior team members want to show, which results in junior teams creating the wrong materials. Ultimately, senior team members see these materials and junior team members often have to start from scratch on incredibly short timelines (less than 24 hours) – resulting in unnecessary stress, subpar work, and lack of sleep" [1] This is a problem! Also, when I was an intern, it wasn't uncommon for an MD to have a meeting at 11AM, be back to back until 5PM, to only drop a request on the associate's desk at 6 from that morning meeting. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jyeu-wvS3Z10xQ0BlMIDOkh_INoP_Nnb/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jyeu-wvS3Z10xQ0BlMIDOkh_INo...

What exactly are they grinding on? Like, what is the output of their effort?

by eof 6y ago

What exactly are they grinding on? Like, what is the output of their effort?

iamacyborg 6y ago

Money, presumably.

cube00 6y ago

More hours at work means more deals then the other guy who went home at 5pm.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> What exactly are they grinding on? Like, what is the output of their effort? There is a sharp divide between those who bring in revenue and everyone else. Analysts and associates do not bring revenue. Their work is to idle until a deal is imminent. At that moment, being the team that can immediately whip together materials for a client, that can immediately generate closing documents, that can be the difference between winning and losing the deal. Between tens or hundreds millions of dollars in fees for the firm or zero. Between those intense bursts it's mostly farting around. At the higher level, more work means more selling. Unless you're in a real bum corner of the market, there is always another deal you could pick up. If you start reaching diminishing returns, empire build--branch out. One of the biggest breaks I had in my career was moving from a finance culture to an engineering-led one. The finance culture works. But it optimises for short-term results and it optimises for the partners, those at the top.

ghaff 6y ago
Of course, Big Law works on a similar model. associates get billed out for far more than they make so it's in the interests of partners to generate lots of billable hours. And then it's basically up or out. Make partner (at which point, as you say, your job basically becomes sales to a non-trivial extent) or leave. Management consulting as well.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Big Law works on a similar model Law and consulting are different because more hours literally means more revenue. Banking is success fee driven. It's thus theoretically possible for hours to be reduced without impacting--or possibly, positively impacting--revenue.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Fair enough even if the end result is pretty much the same. My understanding is that investment banking, which I made a very deliberate decision not to go into, throws associates at a whole lot of deal book production and proofreading that is only read by some other overworked associate.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Yea that's one of the worst things that really convinced me that the investment banking track was not for me: How utterly pointless the work was. You're spending 100 hours a week updating slide decks to use 14 point font instead of 12 point, and making the titles a different shade of blue. And it will all be read by....likely nobody, maybe someone who doesn't care what the font is. I'd rather grind as a software developer on a feature that never ships--at least there's creative output, and you're learning something.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
belly_joe 6y ago
I think the chief complaint of the analysts is less about the total hours worked than the fact that much of the grinding is not productive. From what I recall, the issue was that management knew analyst time was not valuable at all, and so it was common practice for them to leave the office at 7pm with an "i need this by tomorrow" order for client materials that were meant for speculative pitching rather than supporting a live deal. Thus the analyst ends up getting holidays and weekends crushed repeatedly by projects that aren't really that meaningful and could have been spread out in a much more manageable way if the higher ups had given any consideration at all to what they were asking.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > the chief complaint of the analysts is less about the total hours worked than the fact that much of the grinding is not productive It's a fair complaint. This anecdote stood out: "VPs create shells for decks that do not align with what senior team members want to show, which results in junior teams creating the wrong materials. Ultimately, senior team members see these materials and junior team members often have to start from scratch on incredibly short timelines (less than 24 hours) – resulting in unnecessary stress, subpar work, and lack of sleep" [1] This is a problem! Also, when I was an intern, it wasn't uncommon for an MD to have a meeting at 11AM, be back to back until 5PM, to only drop a request on the associate's desk at 6 from that morning meeting. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jyeu-wvS3Z10xQ0BlMIDOkh_INoP_Nnb/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jyeu-wvS3Z10xQ0BlMIDOkh_INo...